I'm not advocating anything, but learning to properly operate weapons can be both a difficult endeavor and possibly useful out in the wilderness. It requires patience, an amount of full body control, and (if presented correctly) a respect for the dangerous force of machines.
Learning the basics of an FPS does none of this.
Also, we're talking about cub scouts here (approx. age 7-10). Cub scouts are limited to Archery and BB gun shooting with trained supervisors present. Only boy scouts (teenagers) are allowed to operate firearms.
"Born Free" during the opening beach scene.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" during the missile launch.
And even "Command and Conquer"'s victory music at the very end of the clip.
At least we know the RIAA/MPAA can send take down notices to get this "arms deal commercial" removed =P
Great idea. It got me excited until I read it a second time thinking from a non-geeky perspective. It won't get off the ground unless they get someone that understands PR.
Having 3 paragraphs to explain themselves, and mentioning things like "distributed network", "aggregate", and "extendable plugin framework" simply alienates most people that use social networks.
Facebook just says, "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life." Twitter says, "Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world" on the front page, and had a cute video to explain itself before. Foursquare does the same thing.
For Diaspora to get off the ground, they need a similar cute video, and succinct slogan like "All your friends in one spot. More control over your stuff."
It's too late to hide. The radio waves are already on their way.
Those radio waves that are beamed into "deep space" degrade and become indistinguishable from the rest of the background electromagnetic radiation just outside our solar system.
Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, is 4.2 light years away. Our radio waves don't even come close.
So yeah, SETI... that organization that spends a lot of time listening for and sending radio signals, can only hope to catch something from a ship EXTREMELY close to us. And if the aliens have the capability to get that close to our solar system, you can damn well bet they have the capability to see/scan everything in our solar system and already know we're here.
So no, it's not too late. One way to get a signal out in the future, is send a massive amount of organic compounds into the sun. Those compounds are not seen naturally in a star, and they can be detected by examining the light through astronomical spectroscopy (a current human technology). Then we wait the light years it takes for the photons to get to them, and see if they notice.
It was the only fully featured music player / organizer (that I know about) that ran on the platform trinity (Linux, Windows, and Mac) out of the box. It looked and acted the same irregardless of the platform.
This is rather important in my opinion, and I find myself recommending these kinds of programs (Firefox, Open Office, VLC, Gimp, Pidgin, etc), because when a computer illiterate friend learns a program like this, they are less locked into their OS. They can use them on their Macs at work, their Windows at home, and Linux if they happen to stumble on it, and they'll feel comfortable with the same familiar programs.
Songbird is far from perfect, but it is an easy switch from iTunes (it can keep the iTunes library in sync with its own), has more features (with some excellent addons) and plays more file types. So now I'm looking for the next platform independent player / organizer to recommend.
I'd love to hear about an observed star like this, but at the same time I'm very skeptical of this prediction. We've created strange quarks in particle accelerators, but they decay in 10^-10 seconds. So the prior theory (that they may exist for a brief instant as a stage in the star's collapse) seems to correlate more closely to actual observation. The new theory suggests a way for the star to obtain equilibrium, keeping the quarks in that state while burning them.
Hopefully now that they know what to look for, we can turn the prediction into observation.
...a very small fraction of the energy will be emitted as electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light), making these objects very hard to detect.
oh...
Well then, for the time being I'm more inclined to side with the other guy in the article:
"It highly implausible that such an electroweak star would exist," said Paolo Gondolo of the University of Utah.
Exactly how would a kill switch for the intrawebs work?
This bill is not about a kill switch.
From the summary:
...giving the president unprecedented power to issue a nation-wide blackout or restriction on websites without congressional approval.
Giving a strong legal power (such as power to shut off the internet in an emergency) makes it much easier to control individual websites.
A few years ago, during the big debates on the legality of wire-tapping and torture, many of the counter arguments ran along the lines that the president was within his legal rights because of similar and more massive powers he had during "emergencies" or "war time". And those arguments worked.
No one cares about the practicality of a kill switch, least of all the politicians intelligent enough to understand the bill. A kill switch is not the main goal.
The USA sold a lot of stuff cheaply to Europe in the 19th century (such as wheat). It was in a similar position at that time to China and India's position now. It did pretty well financially in the 20th century.
Can you take a 7% hit in salary and still survive? Would you want to? That's the position China's in now. But calling the USA their "life blood" is a bit of a dramatic opinion.
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."
-T. S. Elliot
"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal."
-Pablo Picasso
"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."
-Igor Stravinsky
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
-Steve Jobs
"Good coders code, great coders reuse."
-anonymous
I appreciate your pity, and I'm thankful for people like you that can guide capitalism properly.
However, I never mentioned compromising ethics. Far from it, I agree with you in not compromising them.
To understand what was meant, you have to hold three thoughts in your mind at once.
A creation is separate from the creator. (meaning: a table is not a carpenter)
Different creations have different values.
All humans (including yourself) have taken stances defending faulty logic. (meaning: they've made mistakes)
Mature reflection upon these 3 priori leads to certain understandings:
All creators have made mistakes, including the creators of your most favorite art, music, and literature, yet the creations have their own values.
The mistake a creator makes does not necessarily cause a mistake within their craft.
You believe it is unethical to pay for a craft created by someone you believe to be mistaken. I'd submit that if that were the case it would be unethical to buy anything.
However, if you distinguish the creator and the creations as separate entities, you can assign different values to each creation.
For example, your signature, "Please read and at least attempt to understand comment before replying, kthxbye.", is arrogant, and an obvious attempt to somehow claim intellectual superiority to people you've never met; a defense mechanism. That creation (or use of it) is detrimental; worthless at best and a negative value at worst. But that signature is not you. You are a multifaceted human being that can make good things despite your mistakes. I assign much more value to your other words.
And the irony is that you seem to be a smart person defending a bad idea due to an emotional attachment to the subject. And this is the exact same thing that Le Guin is doing.
Do you really believe that a person's thought and belief systems don't come out in their writing?
You said you bought her books in the past. I have too. I don't remember seeing anything in them close to this issue of copyright, but there's many I haven't read. Have you read anything of hers that touches the subject?
Secondly, an author who writes about vicious despots is not necessarily trying to push that as their belief system. They often just explore the insane psyche. The same with fantasy or anything else. So yes, there can be a disconnect. It's quite possible that this copyright issue is a sore topic and not one she wants to focus on while writing. Also, this seems to be a relatively new idea to her, as she was writing a long time before she found people spreading her books on the internet. So it's most likely that any previous writings would not be influenced by this idea.
There are no disconnected beliefs in the human brain.
Every person has beliefs that contradict themselves. These are often found because of conflicting desires. So yes, there are disconnected beliefs in human brains. They stay disconnected until both are brought to the forefront and one has to make a decision. The brain is not a machine devoid of confusion. The ability to differentiate contradicting beliefs and choose one over the other is a key component in maturation.
When one does not see the faulty logic of their views, it is often because of emotional involvement. (It is often compounded by scarcity of information and having to fill in the blanks on our own, thus forming unfounded beliefs. But emotion can override intellect even when a mountain of evidence is present.) Emotions are what cause us to do anything and everything. This is seen most easy with lobotomies. Intellect is emotion's helper. Through the intellect, we can guide our emotions to make better decisions, but it is the emotion that causes us to make that decision.
When one emotion is too powerful it overrides logic. It's very interesting to see studies based on political and religious views and how the brain works. Completely different areas of the brain are used when listening to political candidates you agree with, and when you listen to those from the opposing party. It is emotion that dictates how our brains process the information.
And finally, there is something called morality. You don't compromise it becomes it's convenient; you either have morals or you don't. Mine don't include support for those who preach for things I am against.
Have you ever had a family member whom you disagreed with? Did you stop supporting them, loving them, because of it?
To put it bluntly, there is not one person on Earth that has exactly the same beliefs as you. There will always be something, however minor, that you disagree with. This is the case with everyone. Do you dismiss everything that they have done, over one disagreement?
Chances are, you still love the person, even through a disagreement. Chances are, you've made compromises before even though you still believed you were right. This is not a compromise of morality. On the contrary, recognizing everyone (including yourself) as a multifaceted person with various strengths and weaknesses is what builds the strongest foundations of morality. It allows you to love someone despite their faults.
I strongly disagree with Le Guin on this subject, but to dismiss her and all of her work entirely because of it is silly. She is human.
This is just another case of a very intelligent person defending a bad idea. And this idea is extremely subtle to most people who grew up in this copyright society, so I'm inclined to forgive the person, even while giving no quarter on the bad idea.
When you see extremely intelligent family members or anyone you love, vehemently defending things you know to be faulty logic, and you realize you can still love the person despite their stubbornness in their stupidity, then whether you buy the books or not doesn't matter. Because, unless she begins preaching in her books, the books are separate entities, and the stubborn faulty logic in a topic where she is emotionally involved, is unrelated.
There must be SOMEONE out there with a great experimental video codec that just needs some love.
There are already a lot of video codecs out there, because there's a lot of ways to implement it. They all try to balance numerous factors within performance and quality. It's not easy. There's no one "holy grail" that produces perfect pictures while using a smaller number of resources than all of the others.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not advocating anything, but learning to properly operate weapons can be both a difficult endeavor and possibly useful out in the wilderness. It requires patience, an amount of full body control, and (if presented correctly) a respect for the dangerous force of machines.
Learning the basics of an FPS does none of this.
Also, we're talking about cub scouts here (approx. age 7-10). Cub scouts are limited to Archery and BB gun shooting with trained supervisors present. Only boy scouts (teenagers) are allowed to operate firearms.
The choice of music is hilarious!
"Born Free" during the opening beach scene.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" during the missile launch.
And even "Command and Conquer"'s victory music at the very end of the clip.
At least we know the RIAA/MPAA can send take down notices to get this "arms deal commercial" removed =P
The cool, practical implications for hand-held devices start coming to mind if this is combined with a touch screen.
(The camera would also need to be less obtrusive, and able to detect fingers just above the touch screen.)
Great idea. It got me excited until I read it a second time thinking from a non-geeky perspective. It won't get off the ground unless they get someone that understands PR.
Having 3 paragraphs to explain themselves, and mentioning things like "distributed network", "aggregate", and "extendable plugin framework" simply alienates most people that use social networks.
Facebook just says, "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life." Twitter says, "Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world" on the front page, and had a cute video to explain itself before. Foursquare does the same thing.
For Diaspora to get off the ground, they need a similar cute video, and succinct slogan like "All your friends in one spot. More control over your stuff."
It's too late to hide. The radio waves are already on their way.
Those radio waves that are beamed into "deep space" degrade and become indistinguishable from the rest of the background electromagnetic radiation just outside our solar system.
Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, is 4.2 light years away. Our radio waves don't even come close.
So yeah, SETI... that organization that spends a lot of time listening for and sending radio signals, can only hope to catch something from a ship EXTREMELY close to us. And if the aliens have the capability to get that close to our solar system, you can damn well bet they have the capability to see/scan everything in our solar system and already know we're here.
So no, it's not too late. One way to get a signal out in the future, is send a massive amount of organic compounds into the sun. Those compounds are not seen naturally in a star, and they can be detected by examining the light through astronomical spectroscopy (a current human technology). Then we wait the light years it takes for the photons to get to them, and see if they notice.
The effect of volcanic ash on airplane engines can be found here.
the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank
I'm optimistically inclined to believe everything, but it'd be best to link to a less biased source.
H. G. Wells wrote about this:
The Country of the Blind
As usual, you can start with Wikipedia (Comparing infant mortality rates), and click on their sources to see if they're worth anything.
if this software is intercepting the outputs of legally-paid-for closed source software and altering them, this could never be considered a crack.
Here's Facebook threatening a Greasemonkey script developer for pretty much the same thing (altering the output after it's in the browser).
It was the only fully featured music player / organizer (that I know about) that ran on the platform trinity (Linux, Windows, and Mac) out of the box. It looked and acted the same irregardless of the platform.
This is rather important in my opinion, and I find myself recommending these kinds of programs (Firefox, Open Office, VLC, Gimp, Pidgin, etc), because when a computer illiterate friend learns a program like this, they are less locked into their OS. They can use them on their Macs at work, their Windows at home, and Linux if they happen to stumble on it, and they'll feel comfortable with the same familiar programs.
Songbird is far from perfect, but it is an easy switch from iTunes (it can keep the iTunes library in sync with its own), has more features (with some excellent addons) and plays more file types. So now I'm looking for the next platform independent player / organizer to recommend.
I'm rather skeptical of how well boycotts do these days.
However, bad reviews and ratings seem to work.
Hopefully now that they know what to look for, we can turn the prediction into observation.
...a very small fraction of the energy will be emitted as electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light), making these objects very hard to detect.
oh...
Well then, for the time being I'm more inclined to side with the other guy in the article:
"It highly implausible that such an electroweak star would exist," said Paolo Gondolo of the University of Utah.
"...these things are always very poorly optimized when they’ve just been built."
XKCD #720
Exactly how would a kill switch for the intrawebs work?
This bill is not about a kill switch.
From the summary:
...giving the president unprecedented power to issue a nation-wide blackout or restriction on websites without congressional approval.
Giving a strong legal power (such as power to shut off the internet in an emergency) makes it much easier to control individual websites.
A few years ago, during the big debates on the legality of wire-tapping and torture, many of the counter arguments ran along the lines that the president was within his legal rights because of similar and more massive powers he had during "emergencies" or "war time". And those arguments worked.
No one cares about the practicality of a kill switch, least of all the politicians intelligent enough to understand the bill. A kill switch is not the main goal.
They're opt-out in many European countries today.
And because of this, the number of donors in those countries is significantly higher.
Dan Ariely talks about this "organ donation phenomenon" about 5 minutes into his TED lecture.
Opt-in European countries: 4-28%
Opt-out European countries: 86-100%
If you want your citizens to donate more organs, you simply change the check-box at the DMV from an opt-in question to an opt-out question.
The service also offers ... instant messages.
Dr: a/s/l?
Dr: to help me diagnose
That's how I felt when I read Beowulf after seeing Jaws. Those Brits blatantly ripped off Spielberg.
The USA sold a lot of stuff cheaply to Europe in the 19th century (such as wheat). It was in a similar position at that time to China and India's position now. It did pretty well financially in the 20th century.
As for China's "dependency" on the US:
China's exports are 39.7% of their GDP. Of that 17.7% is to the US. That means 7% of their money comes from exports to the US.
Can you take a 7% hit in salary and still survive? Would you want to? That's the position China's in now. But calling the USA their "life blood" is a bit of a dramatic opinion.
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." -T. S. Elliot
"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -Pablo Picasso
"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." -Igor Stravinsky
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." -Steve Jobs
"Good coders code, great coders reuse." -anonymous
I've sometimes wondered about levels of testosterone and their link with "the desire to lead".
Women and men are certainly mentally as capable as each other, but I wonder if there's a chemically induced motivation difference.
However, I never mentioned compromising ethics. Far from it, I agree with you in not compromising them.
To understand what was meant, you have to hold three thoughts in your mind at once.
Mature reflection upon these 3 priori leads to certain understandings:
All creators have made mistakes, including the creators of your most favorite art, music, and literature, yet the creations have their own values.
The mistake a creator makes does not necessarily cause a mistake within their craft.
You believe it is unethical to pay for a craft created by someone you believe to be mistaken. I'd submit that if that were the case it would be unethical to buy anything.
However, if you distinguish the creator and the creations as separate entities, you can assign different values to each creation.
For example, your signature, "Please read and at least attempt to understand comment before replying, kthxbye.", is arrogant, and an obvious attempt to somehow claim intellectual superiority to people you've never met; a defense mechanism. That creation (or use of it) is detrimental; worthless at best and a negative value at worst. But that signature is not you. You are a multifaceted human being that can make good things despite your mistakes. I assign much more value to your other words.
And the irony is that you seem to be a smart person defending a bad idea due to an emotional attachment to the subject. And this is the exact same thing that Le Guin is doing.
Do you really believe that a person's thought and belief systems don't come out in their writing?
You said you bought her books in the past. I have too. I don't remember seeing anything in them close to this issue of copyright, but there's many I haven't read. Have you read anything of hers that touches the subject?
Secondly, an author who writes about vicious despots is not necessarily trying to push that as their belief system. They often just explore the insane psyche. The same with fantasy or anything else. So yes, there can be a disconnect. It's quite possible that this copyright issue is a sore topic and not one she wants to focus on while writing. Also, this seems to be a relatively new idea to her, as she was writing a long time before she found people spreading her books on the internet. So it's most likely that any previous writings would not be influenced by this idea.
There are no disconnected beliefs in the human brain.
Every person has beliefs that contradict themselves. These are often found because of conflicting desires. So yes, there are disconnected beliefs in human brains. They stay disconnected until both are brought to the forefront and one has to make a decision. The brain is not a machine devoid of confusion. The ability to differentiate contradicting beliefs and choose one over the other is a key component in maturation.
When one does not see the faulty logic of their views, it is often because of emotional involvement. (It is often compounded by scarcity of information and having to fill in the blanks on our own, thus forming unfounded beliefs. But emotion can override intellect even when a mountain of evidence is present.) Emotions are what cause us to do anything and everything. This is seen most easy with lobotomies. Intellect is emotion's helper. Through the intellect, we can guide our emotions to make better decisions, but it is the emotion that causes us to make that decision.
When one emotion is too powerful it overrides logic. It's very interesting to see studies based on political and religious views and how the brain works. Completely different areas of the brain are used when listening to political candidates you agree with, and when you listen to those from the opposing party. It is emotion that dictates how our brains process the information.
And finally, there is something called morality. You don't compromise it becomes it's convenient; you either have morals or you don't. Mine don't include support for those who preach for things I am against.
Have you ever had a family member whom you disagreed with? Did you stop supporting them, loving them, because of it?
To put it bluntly, there is not one person on Earth that has exactly the same beliefs as you. There will always be something, however minor, that you disagree with. This is the case with everyone. Do you dismiss everything that they have done, over one disagreement?
Chances are, you still love the person, even through a disagreement. Chances are, you've made compromises before even though you still believed you were right. This is not a compromise of morality. On the contrary, recognizing everyone (including yourself) as a multifaceted person with various strengths and weaknesses is what builds the strongest foundations of morality. It allows you to love someone despite their faults.
I strongly disagree with Le Guin on this subject, but to dismiss her and all of her work entirely because of it is silly. She is human.
I'm done buying LeGuin books
This is just another case of a very intelligent person defending a bad idea. And this idea is extremely subtle to most people who grew up in this copyright society, so I'm inclined to forgive the person, even while giving no quarter on the bad idea.
When you see extremely intelligent family members or anyone you love, vehemently defending things you know to be faulty logic, and you realize you can still love the person despite their stubbornness in their stupidity, then whether you buy the books or not doesn't matter. Because, unless she begins preaching in her books, the books are separate entities, and the stubborn faulty logic in a topic where she is emotionally involved, is unrelated.
There must be SOMEONE out there with a great experimental video codec that just needs some love.
There are already a lot of video codecs out there, because there's a lot of ways to implement it. They all try to balance numerous factors within performance and quality. It's not easy. There's no one "holy grail" that produces perfect pictures while using a smaller number of resources than all of the others.
Also...
The editors of HTML5 are Ian Hickson (Google, Inc.) and David Hyatt (Apple, Inc.) Apple uses h264 in almost everything, so they would probably like to see it as the standard.